And all this "Google phone wants to have an access to calendar" after each call. I do not know why it needs an access to calendar, I'm not going to give it one, so just stop pecking me. But it will never stop, it seems.
And a lots of useless stuff I cannot delete. I stopped it from popping up with stupid messages, but I cannot delete them. It seems that I will be forced to replace Android with PostmarketOS.
That's the worst way to pick a time that I've seen and used. It requires a lot of swiping, combined with looking for the precise moment to stop the scrolling and not overshoot.
Thankfully in some Android variants it's replaced with much better alternatives. Google Pixel's stock apps in Android 9 and 10 use a round watch face for time points—where you pick first the hour, then the minute with one tap each. However, this still requires rather precise finger work (and has animation in the middle). The best interface IMO is what Pixel and Philips' phones use in the timer: you just type the minute and the second (or the hour and the minute) in four digits, with a huge number pad on the screen. Philips did better here because its pad occupied most of the screen so the tap targets are larger. The benefit of this interface is that you easily develop muscle memory for it, practically no aiming is required.
‘Simple Mobile Tools’ make pretty good apps which are open-source and are present in F-Droid (https://www.simplemobiletools.com). Alas their ‘Simple Clock’ uses scroll spinners in the timer, but perhaps you could ask them to reconsider. I can help with screens from the better interfaces.
It's the kind of thing that seems trivial, but once you've used it, is so blindingly obvious that it's the Right Way To Do Things that you'll wonder why every microwave doesn't do it.
I'll never buy a microwave without it again.
Voice commands really shine for cooking.
One of the worst things about iOS is the time picker. The numbers spin like a slot machine. I think Android nailed it in this specific app widget.
Her old tablet cannot upgrade to newer android version, which prevented zoom from updating, and caused zoom to refuse to work.
I bought her a new tablet. A friend set it up and was able to do a call. Everything was working. That was last week.
Today, I spent 40 minutes on the phone with her because after boot the tablet was showing a black screen.
No possibility for interaction.
Eventually, after many reboots, she noticed some kind of google security warning which instructed her to swipe up. I had to train her to swipe up over the phone.
We had the call, eventually, and I still have no idea what her tablet is asking of her.
Common problems, for me:
- Camera stops working, it seems some apps take over it and it won't work again until I close all apps
- Can't hang up on phone calls because the proximity detection that locks the screen bugs out and won't unlock until after the other person hangs up
- Occasionally gets stuck in a loop where it unlocks then locks again instantly, and I have to power cycle
- General UI lag on apps that should be simple like the clock
- Sometimes it just seems to get stuck on a black screen but eventually it wakes up after a number of minutes
As for the timer/clock there are two features I'd like, maybe there's a way to get them. 1) Have a small counter running under a timer after it expires, so I can tell at a glance how long it's been since then (useful when setting a follow-up timer for cooking after fussing with stuff) 2) Let me set an alarm for a time on a day without having to select it as a repeat, which means it'll run again the next week if I forget to unset it.
> And a lot of useless stuff I cannot delete
Well yes, the os is made by a monopolistic ad company that tries to get your every last bit of sweet, sweet data through its services, but there's an extra step in the distribution chain where the hardware vendor can throw as much garbage into the system rom as they want. I deem android phones without lean cfw pretty much unusable.
My previous phone (ASUS ZenPhone 2) had nice UI like you described. I don't remember really, maybe it was not the stock app, but the clock from Simple Mobile Tools. My new phone (Xiaomi Redme 8) has this stupid slots machine instead of UI and the clock app from Simple Mobile Tools works unreliable.
